@Foxfyre,
Yeah, I felt I was pushing the limits of fair use even without cutting it and that one line was a whole extra paragraph awkwardly inserted in the article that didn't add much to what made this story interesting to me. I generally like to quote a paragraph or two at most, and Rove criticizing Obama isn't much of a story. This article had a lot of small paragraphs that I wanted to make the cut and I removed the least interesting one after deciding that the length of the rest of the article rendered the excerpt I ended up with a legitimate case of fair use.
To me there are two interesting things in the story, Rove criticizing a Republican in public right before a general election and Obama making the dubious claim that McCain is running the sleaziest campaign in history and seizing on this apparent honesty by Rove to push that political attack.